Small steps to big changes

Small
steps
are essential for sustainable changes. Trying to do big changes instead
of
breaking a task down makes it more likely that you will either give up
or meet
an obstacle that you are not ready to address both of which will
undermine your self esteem and your confidence. To boost your confidence
whilst addressing with issues like addictions, anxiety, confidence, and
weight
management break your long term goal down into set short simple goals.
as you meet each target your confidence will grow and your motivation to
take on bigger and more demanding challenges will grow with it.

Learning
to
be accepting of yourself will allow you to break problems down into
smaller stages allowing more mini successes which will help raise
motivation and also make your confidence grow over time.

Small steps to breaking habits

One example
could be dealing with habits like nail biting. Hypnosis is great a dealing with
this issue. One practical thing that you can do to address this can be choosing
to leave on nail unbitten. So accept yourself as a nail biter but not someone
who bites a particular nail. Very quickly you will establish a different
pattern of behaviour and once you have stopped biting that nail and it has grow
longer you could then add another nail to leave unbitten. I have used this
technique to stop nail biting in conjunction with hypnosis and can not imagine
nail biting again.

Be realistic with goal setting

Acceptance
is built on being realistic about how much you can change at any one time. To
prevent failure when learning to be a different, you also need to be realistic about
how long change can take.

With weight
management ask yourself how long ago you were at the weight you want to
revisit. This gives you some scale of how long weight change takes naturally.
You should be looking at no more than 2lbs or a kilo a week and that it will
change in cycles, some weeks will be faster than others. Many people fail to
reach and maintain their weight because they reject adopting realistic goals.

See the bigger picture

The small
steps approach also includes acceptance that there will be obstacles which may
need to be overcome, it may appear as if a backwards step is taking
place. This is very common when making lifestyle changes like, addressing an
addiction, getting fitter, quitting smoking because reverting back to old behaviours
is very common after you have started to make changes.

One strategy
to employ when making lifestyle changes to keep motivation up and boost confidence,
is to view the change journey as a long term event instead viewing it day by
day.

Here, the
person adopting a new lifestyle is then able to see that, should they
experience a small setback, they see it in the context of all the other changes
that they are making instead as a big event in itself.

For example:
someone giving up smoking who has not smoked for 7 days may view a cigarette
today as a failure but viewed over the last year, then this lapse can be seen
as progress. Over a year, one day in seven smoking instead of every day is a huge
change, and has clear health and financial benefits. This pattern will
eventually lead to longer periods of smoke free living until reaching total
abstinence. Ultimately, focus on the progress made instead of the minor
disruptions to the progress. Using a success diary can help focusing on progress.

Equally,
when someone lapses from alcohol abstinence use by taking one drink they can use their
next period of abstinence to remind them that they have already made progress with
their small steps and should just resume this approach and see how far they get
next time.

The process
of seeing an event over a long term can further be supported by viewing set
backs as areas for further learning. By viewing each set back as a new point of
learning a person is able to see this event as a point of personal development
instead of a failure. For example someone who is new to a life in recovery may
find that they drank when they socialised with their friends. Instead of
regretting this and seeing this as a failure they could instead reflect on this
and recognise that they needed to plan better next time and either tell people
that they cannot drink, choose a venue where there is no opportunity to drink alcohol or not to attend
with those people.

Small steps to feel in control

By employing
these techniques a person undertaking lifestyle change still feels in control
of their destiny instead of a failure as their self esteem is still intact and
their motivation to maintain this change is in place as they view any
difficulties as planned and necessary to reach their destination.

Ultimately
small steps for change are sustainable and easier to maintain over the period
needed for the change to evolve into a new lifestyle habit.